Edtharan

I just remembered another thing about Mars. Mars has no ozone layer. This means that a lot of UV radiation will reach the surface. Water, in the presence of UV radiation can break down into Hydrogen and Oxygen. The lighter a planet its the harder it is for it to retain lighter gasses. This is because of equation E=M*V (and V=E/M). So a big, slow gas molecule will hit a lighter gas molecule and give it a much higher velocity. If this velocity is greater than the escape velocity of the planet, the gas molecules will escape and never return. For Earth gaseous Hydrogen will easily escape, so we wouldn't expect much (if any) gaseous hydrogen in our atmosphere (and what a surprise, we don't find it ). For Mars, iirc, it is too light to even retain Oxygen, so any water on Mars would be broken down into Hydrogen and Oxygen Gas that would then escape into space (water under the surface and protected form UV radiation is another matter altogether).

Yes, the Arctic ice cap is in water, but a lot of the Antarctic ice cap is over land. So, because the Antarctic ice cap is over land, it is not currently displacing water. If it them melts, it will add to the level in the oceans (just as poring water from melted ice cubes into a glass).

It's not just with political ideologies. Any attitude or belief is subject to this aspect of human nature. It has to do with the Simplex/Complex/Multiplex mindsets. In the Simplex mindset, a person can only accept that there is 1 way of viewing the world, and that is their way. In the Complex mindset, the people are capable of accepting that there are other world views, but theirs is the best (otherwise why would they have that mindset - if it wasn't the best, then they would have adopted one of the others). In the Multiplex mindset, the people fully accept that other people have different world views and each world view's fitness is relative to the context it is in. Although this might sound like a good system on paper, I doubt it would actually be practical. Travelling across a city would give even the most obsessive lawyer brain overload. Also, what if one of those "clans" had a rule that they had to convert all others to their way. That kind of groups would be incompatible with all other groups. Or, what if you had a group that had a rule that if you attempt to leave their enclave you would be imprisoned (or killed). Then it wouldn't be a simple matter of changing your apartment to escape it. There are also jurisdictional problems, what if a crime is committed in one enclave, but the perpetrator goes to another enclave where that act was not a crime? It works, simple because it is in a story where the author has complete control over all the characters and if they wanted that government to work, then they could make it work. If the above examples seem like they would be far fetched, then look to history. In the first example this is what the Christian Missionaries thought. In the Second, ever heard of the Berlin Wall and in the third, well this occurs between any two countries today (and even internally in countries too). So these examples are not really far fetched. Human nature has demonstrated that we will create systems like this, give the freedom to do so. Even in real countries today, there are groups that create small societies where rules, like the ones I use as examples above, are implemented. Even though it is against their laws of their host country's governments. They don't have the freedom implicit in that story, yet the build the oppressive societies.

And it does. There are some error correction system in cells. Also there is a large amount of redundancy (one of the ways cells handle errors), so we can take small amounts of change without massive problems. But sometimes even all this overwhelms an organism's ability to absorb or correct errors. We call these genetic diseases and not all organisms survive to reproduce. Have a look at this: Human Fertility : Wikipedia So, not every sexual encounter will result in an embryo, and even when it does, there is still a chance that it can miscarry. There is evidence that women can become pregnant and miscarry without ever knowing that they were pregnant. A lot of the reasons that it can be so hard to become pregnant is that there are genetic errors. So the "message" can be completely messed up. The redundancy and error checking really are the main reason that we can reproduce. Without these the "message" would be so mucked up that reproduction could not occur after just a few generations.

The key word you missed was "Directly". We can observe it, just not directly. We can not directly observe an electron, but we can indirectly observe it. You can't (at the moment) directly observe me, but you can observe the effect I have (namely this post and others) and infer my existence and some of my properties). So, we can observe the effect this Dimension has on our world, and our perceptions of the world. What you also failed to realise is that even though we can not directly observe the Time dimension, it still has a direct observational effect. Namely that we have a perception of Time. What I mean is that if we can observe change over a period of time, then we can infer that Time can be measured. If time can be measured, then it exists at least as a conceptual dimensions. We can then look for actual physical effects of this dimension (time distortions, rotations between space and time, etc) and if we can observe these, then we can know that Time is an actual physical dimension. This is what has occurred and been observed, therefore we can infer that Time is a dimension and that it is a dimension as real as Space. No. But it can be stated that if a physical dimension has an effect that we can observe' date=' then we can make inferences about that dimension through those effects. Not directly observing them, but we might be able to observe their effect on the objects and dimensions we can see. If all dimensions are distortable like space and time, then we might be able to rotate one (or more) of these higher dimensions so that we can directly observe it. But this would take massive amounts of energy to do.

I got that from what you said. Specifically that one would measure a different value of C in a different frame of reference. That was what I was using. If you are going to change your claims halfway through your argument, then how can we possibly argue against you. The kinetic energy came from the potential energy. No change in C needed. SO what are you talking about here? For an object to fall to Earth, it must have been move to a higher position. The energy to do so must have come form somewhere else. If it is a rocket, then it came form chemical energy, If we are talking about an asteroid, then the energy came form the Big Bang, if it is a rock I threw, then it came form the kinetic energy from my arm as I threw it (and that energy came from the chemical energy in my muscles which came from the chemical energy from the food I ate, which came form the energy from the photons from the sun which came from the energy released from the fusion of hydrogen into helium...). So all energy is accounted for, and we know where it came from. No need to invoke a change in C to account for a discrepancy in energy as there is no discrepancy. So, I have made a prediction as to what would happen if your theory is correct. What is wrong with that? As I said, if a prediction, using your theory, is different to what happens in reality, then there is something wrong with the theory... Because that is science... I am not trying to explain anything. Just disprove your claims. As is good science. I don't have the burden of proof. I have the burden of disproof. The fact that you repeatedly don't include a full account of the physics that are involved, the fact that conclusions drawn from your theory disagree with reality, the fact that you have contradicted your own claims... None of that is enough? What do I need to do to prove you wrong then? Space. This has been observed. Space is distorted in a gravitational field, just as it is when you are accelerating or moving. So C does not have to change and observations indicate that it is Space that changes. One such observation is the motion of the planet Mercury around the sun. They once thought that another planet had to be inside the orbit of Mercury because the position it was observed at did not match it's calculated position. When they use the spatial distortions due to gravity (as specified by relativity) the calculated position of Mercury matched observations. If it was C that changed and not Space, then Mercury 's position would not have been mismatched between the non-relativity calculations and observations. So this means that gravity bends and distorts space. Another observed effect of distorted space by gravity is gravitational lensing. This is a well studied phenomena used in astronomy. The gravitational mass of a galaxy can distort space to the extent that light from behind the galaxy is "lensed" and bent so that it world in a similar way (but not the same) as a normal glass lens. If it was C that changed, there would be no gravitational lensing effect as it is the distorted space that causes it, not distorted time or variable C, it is distorted space. So, if space can be distorted, you don't need to invoke a variable C to balance the equation. C can remain constant. So, we have examples where Space can be distorted, and Time can be distorted. We have no reason to invoke a variable C (under Occam's razor) with the examples you have given. Every single one has been shot down as being incomplete or having another, simpler explanation (which fits with what is currently accepted). So, I will repeat: What reason have you got that requires a variable value of C. Not an example that could be explained by a variable Space, or a variable Time, but only by a variable C. So far none of your examples has given this requirement. Yes, if you assume an absolute Space, or an Absolute time, then we have to have a variable C. But, as we have evidence that we have variable Time and variable Space, we don't need a variable C (so far). But, as you have stated, these are not even an analogy of what you mean. So how then are they relevant? If they are an analogy, then it still is not a good argument. We also observe Motion (and as this is a major point of your essay) does this mean that it is not a fundamental property of the World (which means you just disproved your own essay if it does). No. You are pushing those analogies too far, to the point that they have no relevance to the topic of discussion. But, even so, how do they even address the point I was making. That is: If your theory makes predictions about the outcome of an experiment, and those predictions do not match up with the results of that experiment. Then the theory must be wrong. This is at the core of Science. If you are not following this concept then you are not doing science, therefore your essay is not science and can not be used to disprove current scientific theories. It might be in the "speculations" sub forum, but this is a science forum.

Very true. Digital is easier to correct errors than in Analogue, and in modern devices we include a lot of error correcting systems. But still we get errors. In organisms, variation is an advantage, so there will not be a high pressure to evolve the high fidelity error correcting system like what we have in our digital devices.

But if your conclusions don't match up with observations, then you conclusions must be wrong. The conclusions are an attempt to predict the outcome of a system, that is what you would observe is the system was allowed to run. If the system is allowed to run and you conclusions don't match up with what the system actually does, then your theory does not describe reality. Your conclusionsmust match up with Observation. If they don't then the conclusions are wrong. If we only considder this situation, the explanation of that "Time is running slower on Earth" is just an equally valid explanation of this situation. You offer no reason why that could be wrong and yours must be right. When I press the point on this, you just seem to come back with "But you can conclude that it is different". But, that is not a reason that you are right. You offer now explanation other than the "according to my theory it must be like this". You are using circular reasoning here: If your theory is right, you can conclude that C is variable. If C is variable, then your theory is right. What that circular reasoning doesn't take into account is: If your theory is wrong, then there is another explanation, that is very well tested that give consistent results that match observations. So, one one hand we have a tested theory that matches observations, and on the other hand we have an untested theory that gives inconsistent results that so far have not show to match with reality. Which one would you choose as the most accurate explanation of reality? Yes you will, if C is variable then: E=100g * 300,000km/s^2 gives a different answer for E than: E=100g * 299,999km/s^2 Do the maths. E will be different if the value of C changes. Therefore, if you have a variable C, then the energy will be different. But you said in an earlier post that you would observe different values of C in different frame of reference. therefore my conclusions from one frame of reference will not match the conclusions from another frame of reference. So, as an ability to predict what would happen to a system, a variable value of C fails. It leads to two different people concluding two different and mutually exclusive results from the same observed event. For instance: A person on the Moon and a person on Earth both observe a particle accelerator experiment where they smash an Proton and an anti proton together. The Moon Observer is in a different frame of reference and concludes that C is 299,999km/s on Earth where the experiment is taking place. The Earth Observer, being in the same frame of reference as the experiment concludes that the value of C is 300,000km/s The Moon observer then uses the value of C to conclude that the energy release in the experiment would be: 2 * 1.672 × 10^27 kg * 299,999km/s^2 Where as the Earth Observer would conclude: 2 * 1.672 × 10^27 kg * 300,000km/s^2 This therefore give different and mutually exclusive results. Both the Moon Observer and The Earth Observer can not both be correct in their conclusions. So, which answer is the correct one? Remember, this is just the conclusions, noit the observations of the experiment. What this all means is that if we have a variable value for c, then E=MC^2 will give inconsistent conclusions between people in different frames of reference. This means that if we have a variable value of C. The equation E=MC^2 must therefore be wrong. As E=MC^2 has been tested quite well and it has not show to be wrong, then you theory must be wrong. Only one or the other can be right. And as E-MC^2 has been tested and has not been found to be wrong, then it must therefore be the other proposition (that C is variable) that must be wrong.

Yes, we evolved to live in a directly perceived 3D world, so imagining other ones is hard. It's not quite the same as the one in Relativity, but it is very similar. The most important difference is that if you don't have dimension that is not directly perceivable, then you don't have a perception of motion (just displacement), Time as we know it would not exist for you. Importantly, this means that the Dimension we call Time is not special (other than we can not directly perceive it), it could have been any dimension at all. All dimensions are treated equally. Now this explanation of time also allows for the QM use of time, that is Change. Under QM, time is change, in my presented model, this change is just comparing the displacement on one axis as compared to another axis. If we can not perceive along one of these axis, then any displacement along it will appear as a time like "motion" in the perceived dimensions. In relativity, under my model, it is necessary for the Axis to be allow to be rotated and distorted. The direction that a dimension is, is dependant on the local environment (frame of reference). So in QM, all you are considering is the displacement in one of the dimensions, and relativity all you are doing is considering the distortions to the axis. They are not mutually exclusive under this model. It is the difference between Displacement and Rotation.

Imagine a ruler. This is 1 dimension. Now mark off two points. What we have are two points. One point is a displacement of the other (note: I did not say movement - I'll get to that later). Displacement takes no time, so this ruler is truly 1 dimensional. An important aspect of this Ruler is that you have nothing to compare this displacement too except other displacements. Imagine a sheet of Graph Paper. This is two dimensions. Now mark off two points anywhere. What we have are two points. They can be considered a displacement, but now we can consider the displacement along one axis as compared to the displacement along the other. This is an extremely important difference between the ruler and the graph paper. Comparing the displacement along one axis as to another axis is the basis for understanding Time. Now we get to movement. All motion is a displacement in Space as compared to the displacement in Time. On the Graph paper, this can be represented as a displacement along the X axis as compared to the Y axis. Now, imagine that you can only directly perceive the X axis. You can not directly perceive the Y axis. However, what you do perceive is that you have movement. The Y axis has become Time. You can only perceive your change in position along the X axis as you change your position along the Y axis, and as you can't perceive the extent of the Y axis, you see the world as changing, you can see movement. If there was no displacement along the Y axis, you would not see any change along the X axis, you would not "experience" Time. You could not see motion. This can also be extended to 3 dimensions. The best way is that of a movie. Each frame of a movie is 2 dimensions. However, each from of the move can be stacked, one on top of the other. This stack is the 3rd dimension. Now, viewing each from individually, although 2 dimensions, does not show any movement. You can have displacement (that is you can have 2 points on the same frame). But, when we look at displacement in the 3rd dimension, we again get movement (that is why we call them movies, not stillies ). Now the space we perceive is 3 dimensional, so time then, must be a dimension that we can compare displacement in the 3 dimensions to. This would be the 4th dimension. Now, what would this look like to a creature that can directly experience the 4th dimension. Well they would not experience time (if there are more than 4 dimensions they would, but we are only considering a 4 dimensional universe at the moment). The could only see the displacement in those 4 dimension, much like we can see the displacement in the 2 dimensions that exist on the graph paper (but the hypothetical creature that only directly perceives the X dimension on the graph paper would experience the Y dimension as Time). To us, it would appear that there was no Time for the Graph paper creature, but to the Graph paper creature, it would experience time. So, what is Time? Time is just a dimension that we can not directly observe, but that exists, and so we can make comparisons about displacement along our Spatial dimensions. It is nothing more than a set of reference coordinates that we can't directly observer, but nonetheless must be as real as our spatial dimensions (or we couldn't measure displacement along it in comparison to our spatial dimensions).

Yes, relative to you the cannon ball is at rest. This however doesn't really cover my question. I never asked if the cannon ball's inertia is relative to the frame of reference. I was not questioning the moving frame of reference, but the gravitational frame of reference. You are mixing frames of reference here. You are saying that the frame of reference where the explosion is on Earth is the same as it is in Space. This is not so. It is experiencing a different gravitational field and is therefore in a different frame of reference. because of this, you forgot that the fact that the Earth observer, now is a different frame of reference to the explosion will disagree and give mutually exclusive results to the observer in space. You haven't answered the question at all. all you have done is shift the frame of reference and ignored/not factored in the observer on Earth. Actually, from experiments done, the annihilation energy is the same, not different, so this rules out that C is variable. In different gravitational potentials, the annihilation energy is the same. In annihilations involving moving frames of reference, the excess energy is accounted for due to the energy put into the system (by particle accelerators). There is no unaccounted for energy that indicates a variable value of C. Current particle accelerators exist at different altitudes, and therefore at different gravitational potentials. They do not need to adjust the values of their results to account for the different gravitational frame of reference. If C was variable, they would have to. But if I change my frame of reference to the event, then according to your proposition, I should see a different energy value than one who doesn't change their frame of reference. If the energy of the annihalation is differnet and the energy was used to power something (say a car), then the remaining observer will see the car able to move X number of metres because of it, and I would see it move Y metres. now, we get together and measure the distance of the car on the surface with a single ruler. How can I measure Y, and you measure X, on the same ruler at the same time. This is the major flaw of your argument. It requires that two mutually exclusive results must both occur. Lets try a different one: Imagine you have a Cat in a box. If the energy of the explosion is X joules, then the cat will be killed by a bottle of poison gas, if Y joules are measured then the Cat will be allowed to live. Now, the person next to the box uses His detector and measures Y (lucky for that cat), but the person in orbit, measures X and therefore sees the cat killed. But hang on, how can that cat be both killed and saved at the same time? No, because of the necessity in your proposition that C be variable, you end up with inconsistent results. The observer in different frame of reference can not agree on the results and therefore will see different Universe evolve from then on. No it doesn't. There has been no energy loss. All the energy can be accounted for without a variable value of C. Why then do you insist that all these experiments are not calculating the correct energy? You seem to be equating potential energy as to being equivalent to a change in C. But you can have other sorts of potential energy. What about the potential energy in a chemical reaction, is this due to a change in C, or the potential energy in a spring. Potential energy is a kind of stored energy, a tension if you will. How does a change in C deliver a store of energy? The other thing is that the difference in energy of a Matter/Antimatter annihilation will be different to the change in energy of a cannonball launched into orbit. This means that for the same frame of reference you can get 2 (or more) different values for the change in C. So even if your proposition was correct, the same observer in the same frame of reference will get different results of their calculated local value of C, depending on what they are actually observing. So it even fails for self consistency. So not only does it give results that are internally inconsistent, it does not give results that match to reality. On these ground your proposition, as it stands and you presented, can not possibly be true in this reality.

Yes, I can't give you the citations as I can't remember the specific locations that I have heard them form. But they have come form Biologists (retired) that I worked with, books, TV programs, magazines, lay people, etc. The sources are so diverse and they don't all agree with each other that I can't actually give citations. The point I was trying to make was not that there are more than those 4, but that people have such different definitions of what is necessary for life that the classification of live and non life is a false one. It is more of a continuum from non life to life than a sharp classification. Yes, a package of chemical reactions is a better description. Thanks. Again, I see this as the conceptual "élan vital". You say that there is a definite thing (set of criteria) that we can apply that separates Life from Non Life. I do not think such a line exists. The fact that we can not agree on what criteria to use indicates that (but, admittedly, is not proof) that such a line does not exist. One may see virus (and may be even prions) as parasites, that have not needed to develop a metabolism (or lost it) because of their host. The Plasmodium parasite that causes malaria, it has lost the ability o reproduce by its self, has it therefore lost the ability to reproduce and so not alive (by the 4 criteria)? I doubt that you would think that. But, as it has lost the ability to reproduce without a host, so to has the virus lost the ability to metabolise without a host. It must have lost it because it virus could not have existed as they can not metabolise without a host, so without a host they could not exist. And unless then "sprang forth" fully formed as virus, they must have evolved form something else, and that would have had the ability to metabolise. Prions, on the other hand, do seem to have "sprung forth" fully formed as they are a "mutation" of a protein. So, it is quite likely that they can be classified as "not alive", but in reality are part of the package of chemical reactions that make up a living organism. They are part of a living organism (although a part that has gone wrong), but not a living organism in their own right. But are parasites alive? Yes, the computer virus are more like parasites (just as virus are parasites) than a bacteria. Why do people associate a living organisms in a computer as needing to be Sentient or Intelligent? Why can't the program be no more Sentient or Intelligent than a bacteria, or Algae? Yes it does. It tells us that if there is a direct answer, it won't be simple. Which is my point. but the whole point of my last post was that people can't even agree on that is is just 4, let alone agree what those 4 are. By specifying that there is 4 and only 4 criteria needed to determine if a system is living or not, you are subscribing to the Conceptual élan vital, that is you think that there is a set of properties that if a system has them then they are alive. These 4 criteria you proposed are the Conceptual Vital Force that makes a system living or not.

Well I have heard everything from the 4 to Must be Carbon based, Have DNA, be Autocatalytic (similar, but not the same as reproduction - it is more like growth and reproduction combined, with a bit more about homoeostasis), that they must evolve, emergent properties, and so forth. I think I have heard around 12 or more different aspects that people use classify something as "living". The 4 seem to be things that all accept as necessary, but not everyone agrees that there is only the 4 necessary. Personally, I think the problem lies with Humans. We tend to want simple and straightforward explanations and classifications. We also tend to think of Life as something "special". A sort of "élan Vital" . Most people have long abandoned the physical élan Vital (some still subscribe to a spiritual version), but other fall for the Conceptual élan Vital. This conceptual version is that we think we can find some conceptual property that allows us to classify something as living or not. The reality is that Life (as we know it) is a chemical reaction. There is nothing conceptually special about life. A lot of the discussion in this thread is about the conceptual élan vital. There is no evidence that such a thing exists, just as the original élan vital has long since been disproved, as also there is also no evidence for a spiritual élan vital, the conceptual élan vital has no evidence for it either. When we try to classify something a living or not, we keep running into the problem of the definition. Is a virus alive? Are prions alive? Are computer programs created to emulate living system alive? Are complex, self replicating and evolving computer programs alive? If we could provide a definite answer that all could agree on, then there might just be a conceptual élan vital, but as it seems we can't, this means that the is not likely to be a conceptual élan vital (or any other kind).

I am glad you mentioned Siberia. Currently in Siberia, the permafrost is retreating. This is despite increased precipitation. The fact remains that if the temperature is above 0 degrees Celsius, Ice can';t form, no matter how much precipitation occurs. I thought you were smarter than this. For Ice to form the water has to freeze. If the temperatures are above freezing, then ice can't form. So increasing the temperatures will reduce the areas that ice can form. The amount of precipitation has no effect. Your counter augment against this point has absolutely no relevance and is an extremely obvious Red Herring. A forest would take years to grow. The vegetation is rotting now so there will be, at best, a delay where the greenhouse gasses are all released before the forest grows. And besides, forests produce CO2 and methane as the vegetation in them rots. The do act as sinks for CO2, but they do become saturated rapidly and can no longer soak it up (this occurs pretty much as the forest is growing so they are not all that big of a sink). Mostly they act as a sink for their own CO2 production, so any CO2 produced by the rotting vegetation from the permafrost is not absorbed by the forest. Again, Siberia is a good example. The loss of permafrost there has dramatically increased the amount of greenhouse gasses released and no forest has yet grown on the sites. Even deeper sigh Look. You missed the entire point of what I was sasying. You were saying that there is no evidence that there exists runaway warming effects due to positive feedback loops. When I give examples of them, you dismiss them (with a sigh). You seem to not like evidence that contradicts your cherished beliefs. the point was that a small amount of warming CAN lead to a positive feedback loop in which warming and CO2 release becomes rapid. You said it couldn't, I showed evidence that it can. Yes, there might not be evidence that is obvious in the last few hundred years, but if you actually look at what I was saying, then you will understand that there is a small period of time where the temperature can slightly increase before this runaway effect starts up. Just think about it. The temperatures of the Earth fluctuate quite a bit. The difference in temperatures between summer and Winter can be quite extreme in certain locations. But the average temperature does not remain at extremes for long periods of time. The amount of permafrost (only one known positive feedback loop) is quite large. It won't all melt in one or two summers, or if the temperatures increase a small amount. However, once the temperatures raise up enough and last long enough to melt the permafrost there will be a large release of CO2 in a geologically short time period (100 years or so). As these greenhouse gasses are released they will add to the effects of any warming that already exist. Now you have an effect that is a positive feedback loop and a runaway effect. But, and here is the important thing, it doesn't occur over night. It takes a certain amount of temperature increase over a certain period of time to get going. Once it starts it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to stop. Yes, there are differences between the interglacial warmings and human caused warmings. But there are crucial similarities. Namely the positive feedback loops (which we were discussing) that exist and that caused a rapid acceleration of the warmings at these times. So, during these interglacial warmings, the rate of temperature increase can not be accounted for by the energy form the sun. The only explanation for them is that there were some form of positive feedback loops causing an acceleration of the warming. Investigations of what these were gave us some of them. Could these same feedback loops effect the situation today with global warming. YES. So, we need to understand them and see how they could effect the results of GW. That is what I did and you dismissed it. That is not healthy scepticism, that is denial. Yes you are. You ignore evidence and side step issues. You use logical fallacies to support your views. You are in denial.

With the onset of puberty, the number of neural connection actually gets reduced. The brain starts pruning it's connections, yet we get smarter. So it si not simple the number of connections in the brain, but the quality of those connections (what they connect to and the organisation of them). So, to get smarter, we first need to increase the number of connection, and then prune them, leaving the ones that are necessary. We can still do this later in life, but at a much reduced rate (and so it is harder to learn new things). If we could "engineer" our brains so that we could make and break these connections at the same rate we did when we were children, then we might be able to dramatically increase human intelligence.

The number varies depending who you ask. If we just go by those 4, then I have written programs that have entities able to do this in a virtual environment. SO by these criteria, I have created life (which fits my Internet moniker "Edtharan" who is the creator God from my D&D game world ). I have written programs that have entities that also "evolve" (genetic algorithms) and used these to define the agents in the life simulation. The metabolism was various simulated "chemicals" that they could gather from their environment and convert into other "chemicals". Some of these conversions would require energy and some would release energy. To build the various structures they needed to move these "chemicals" into place and bind them together (this was governed by the genetic algorithm). So growth and metabolism worked together. Some of the structures they could build were sensitive to other "chemicals" or even touch, so they could sense their environment and react to it. They also could reproduce via the genetic algorithm and it also allowed them to evolve. So, as for those 4, well they have been filled by computer programs and humans have created a new form of life.

This is exactly what is going on in England at the moment. The southern parts of England are sinking and the Northern parts are rising. This is because of the last Ice age when ice covered the northern parts of England. The weight of all that ice pushed the northern parts of England down and this forced the southern parts up. Now that the weight has gone, the crust is rebounding and adjusting it's self. I don't think this effect would be all that big. Also remember there is ice in the Arctic that would also melt shifting the CM south. These would most likely cancel each other out (or nearly cancel out). The melting of the Arctic wouldn't cause a rise in the sea levels, but as far as changing the CM it would have the same effect as the Antarctic. This means point 3, 5 and 6 won't really happen. Although there is a lot of mass locked up in the ice, it is an insignificant fraction of the mass of the Earth. So it wouldn't have any significant effect on the rotation of the Earth. There might be some change in the rotation of the Earth by a fraction of a second, that is only picked up by atomic clocks, but nothing as significant as you suggested.

...and... So even if go down the Nuclear path, nothing will happen for 30 years or so. Why not use those 30 years to develop other power generation technologies rather than spend it on Nuclear power plants which, by the time they are built will be obsolete? Yes, getting the fuel into the power plant is not a big cost, what the real cost is, is dealing with the waste products. Storage for tens of thousands of years will cost a bit. And then we have to protect it against natural (earthquakes, etc) and man made disasters (like wars, terrorism, etc). The flaw here is you are not considering the full cost that Nuclear fuel generates. The Mining to plant cost is small, but the handling of the waste product is very expensive. Only if there was the positive feedback loop. Negative feedback loops can slow this acceleration down. Also there is the "Sinks" that can occur that will absorb some of the effects, but once they have been saturated, then there will be nothing to slow down the acceleration. It is a complex system and you present simplified examples that just barely escape being Strawman (due to their simplifications) arguments against GW and it's effects. Actually, the switch form Glacial to Interglacial is rapid, and that indicates that there is a positive feedback loop causeing acceleration of the effects. If it was just the amount of Solar energy being different, then the switch from Glacial to interglacial would be slow and match the rate of change of the solar energy. As the rate of change doesn't and the change is very rapid (compared to the rate of solar energy change), then this is, bot exactly proof, but very strong evidence for it. Also there is a period of delay where the warming effects from the increased solar energy doesn't cause immediate warming. This would be because of sinks and negative feedback loops keeping the system in "check". But a point is reached where these sinks become saturated and the negative feedback loops become overwhelmed by the positive feedback loops and you get a rapid switch from glacial to interglacial. So yes, the graphs do support the positive feedback loop scenario of GW. Actually it was a strawman, by you. I claimed that due to GW countries would face serious problems. I used Tuvalu as an example as, if sea levels keep rising, it will become swamped. What you then posted was that this was not the case as you said that the sea levels around Tuvalu were decreasing. However, this is not due to anything but a special occurrence of currents which will not continue forever. And, even if they did, the sea level will still rise and swamp the country. So your counter argument to this problem is not really a counter argument at all, it does not change the fact that the sea level is rising and eventually the country of Tuvalu will become the proverbial Atlantis and sink beneath the waves. This was pointed towards your dismissal of the problems that rising sea levels cause by GW will create. You said that people could just move, but these people will loose their entire country and have to move to other countries. Are you willing to have these people come into your town, take over your jobs? It is not just Tuvalu, many Island peoples will face this exact same situation and many peoples living on what is now the coasts will have to move. The disruptions to the economies of the world will be quite large. So the fact that these chemicals will be in close proximity to people. Mosquitoes are not the only things to touch these surfaces, people will lean against them, children will touch them, pets and other animals too. Rain and condensation will wash the chemicals off and onto the floors and into the water supplies. This is an extremely careless use of it. You seem to only look at the most simplified aspects of any system. This is either because you don't understand how the complexities of the world really are, or deliberate. Yes. We do have to also think short term. But the short term solutions you propose don't take into account their long term effects. Yes, Nuclear would be effective in the short term, but it also has very long term problems (storage and management of the waste for tens of thousands of years). So your short term solution leaves us with an unacceptable long term problem. Gas and Coal fired power stations were an effective short term solution. They needed a cheap and easily used power supply and other technologies would take too long to develop. Look at the problems we now face because they just grabbed at a short term solution and didn't take into account (or know) the long term problems it would cause. For one who said to avoid knee jerk solutions, you seem to fall for them. By the time the Nuclear power stations could be got up and running, we could have developed some of these renewable power sources and created the power stations to exploit them. You can;t just "drop" a Nuclear power station in somewhere when you need more power. It can take decades to build and prepare the site for it. When planing a Nuclear power station, they are planing 30 to 50 years in advance before it goes operational. This means that even if we make the decision today to install a Nuclear power plant, we will not see it come online for at least 30 years. In 30 years time, research into Solar or Geothermal will be mature (if we took the billions that would be spent to get a single Nuclear power plant up and running and put that into researching Solar or Geothermal). The infrastructure necessary for Solar or Geothermal is far cheaper and can be installed in far less time than the Nuclear station can be created. SO for the costs of 1 or 2 Nuclear stations, we could have effective Solar or Geothermal plants up and running far sooner and supplying more power. Therefore Solar and Geothermal will actually be a far better short term solution as we could have them operation sooner than the Nuclear stations could possibly be operation. May be it our fault for not saying that we were considering the real world, not a simplified view of it. We are talking about the environmental system of Earth, therefore we did not consider it necessary to give a complete list of every single aspect of it for every example that we present. It would be assumed that if you are discussing the climate systems then, even if you just use 1 example form it, you also are including the effects of all the other aspects of that system. See, the other problem is that we don't know all of the feedback loops that exist in the climate systems, so how can we list them if we don't know about them? We have to just assume that if we are talking about an entire system, then if we discuss a single part of that system that the people in the discussion will know enough to actually take it in the context of the whole system. Again: What is your source on this data? You have used this several times and I haven't heard where you got this from. Lets see if we can agree to the basics: 1) CO2 is a gas that reduces the amount of energy lost from the Earth's atmospheric and oceanic systems. 2) Increased energy in the atmospheric and oceanic system can lead to an increase in temperature. 3) Increased temperatures will increase the amount of ice that melts in summer. 4) Increased temperatures will decrease the amount of ice that forms in winter. 5) If there is less water locked up as ice on land then this will cause the sea levels to rise 6) Land formally locked up in ice that is now thawed has vegetation which will rot and cause more greenhouse gasses to be released. This causes a positive feedback loop (one of many such loops both positive and negative) 7) There exist "Sinks" that can absorb the effects of GW, until they become saturated, at which point they no longer can delay or reduce the effects of GW. 8) People are producing Greenhouse gasses like CO2 and Methane. 9) We can change the amount of greenhouse gasses that we produce.

What you seem to be missing here is the concept of a positive feedback loop. CO2 causes warming, this warming thaws area that were in permafrost. This then releases more CO2 and the temperature will continue to climb. Positive feed back. So yes, the records should sow that as the Earth Warms the CO2 levels rise. But it is also these rising CO2 level that is causing the warming. That is why it is called Feedback. So you can't really use it as proof that the sea levels are not rising. It is experiencing an unusual situation that temporarily reverses the effects of sea level rise. What happens if those currents stop, or change so that situation is no longer occurring? One of the effects of GW is to change the pattern of oceanic currents. As you said the Carcinogenic effects might not be what they initially though, but DDT does not only produce cancer. IT cases birth defects, and other non cancerous problems. These effects have well and truly been linked to DDT usage, the incidents even when down when DDT stopped being used. Are the people that wish to bring back DDT considering these problems? So would taking funding out of polluting power generation and using it to develop renewable/non polluting power cause human harm? Would developing cars that didn't use petrol or other fossil fuels cause human harm? Would implementing the Carbon emissions trading cause human harm? If these "activities" would not cause human harm, then why have the governments stalled their implementation, why do people resist doing something? Nuclear Power can only take us so far, otherwise why hasn't it got more than 12% of current power supply. If we cut out Coal power, then we need something to take it's place, could Nuclear supply 24% of out power needs without being too expensive (the more Nuclear plants the higher the costs of the fuel). I think that if, world wide, Coal power plants were completely replaced by Nuclear the cost of the Fuel would more than Double. This would make Nuclear far too expensive as a power source. It's also the reason that coal doesn't have much more than the 12%, as more plants mean more coal is used and the demand and therefore the price of coal goes up and makes it too expensive to use. So Nuclear power is not likely to be a viable power source as it would make it too expensive. Therefore we need some other power supply that either uses renewable fuel or no fuel. The only viable ones are Hot Rock/Geothermal, Solar, Wind and Wave/Tide power. Wind and Wave/Tide power are noisy and the Wind some people find objectionable. This really only leaves Solar or Geothermal. Geothermal would be capable of supplying all the worlds power many times over, but it is expensive to maintain (the gasses in the Earth around Hot Rocks are corrosive). Therefore, considering long term solutions, Solar is the most likely to stand the test of time. But currently it receives very little funding and so progress on it has been slow. Well that's the thing. Because there has been so little funding, almost no research has been done to actually see which of these would be the most viable. This is what I am talking about. Solar cells might be viable for small plants (like on the roofs of houses), but as a large scale plant, not likely. The solar chimneys have a similar problem to the wind turbines, but fortunately the positioning of the plant is much more flexible than for Wind. The mirrors turning water into steam might be the most viable for a large scale plant as they do not "stick up" like Wind turbines or Solar Chimneys do and avoid the aesthetics problem. However there are some promising discoveries being made with solar cells that might make them a viable option for a large scale plant (improved efficiency is the key here so that the plants can be made smaller). This is true. But in the big 4 producing nations (America, China, Japan and Europe) they are. The plants also might not be subsidised, but the mining process for coal and Nuclear is in many of the countries that they get their fuel form. So the costs for running the plants are subsidised and therefore artificially reduced. If these support funding were removed the costs of renewable would be far more competitive. Only for a short term, knee jerk reaction. But as you said, you wanted to avoid those. We have to think long term. Coal and Gas are out as they are greenhouse gas polluters. Hydro is near to capacity, and increasing Nuclear will increase the cost of power and has issues with storage of the radioactive wastes (long term here). So if we are thinking of supplying power to a growing population (world wide) and more power needed to drive the power hungry developed and developing countries, then we can not use Nuclear as the prices would sky rocket and we would need places to store the spent fuel for tens of thousands of years. Nuclear can only, therefore, be a short term solution at best. Nuclear might allow us to get over our addiction to fossil fuels, but we have to be careful not to get addicted to it too. It is an economic problem. The more power plants we have that need a non renewable "Fuel" to operate, the higher the price of power will be. Therefore any power generation system that uses such fuels can not be a long term solution for a growing and increasingly technological world. The costs will grow exponentially. Yes, Nuclear might be the only economically viable power source to take over from coal within the next 30 years or so, but what happens after that? Even if there was no greenhouse gas problem, the fact is that the world population is growing and the demand of power per person is also growing. This means that a non renewable power source will become increasingly more and more expensive. For this reason alone we need to switch to a renewable power source, sooner or later. But due to GW, we need to abandon the greenhouse gas polluting power generators sooner rather than later.

Yes, I have seen those photos and heard that explanation, however, I was not referring to that. The fact remains that Tuvalu is not very high above the water line. In cyclones, the whole country can be submerged under water. If the oceans rise the same amount that it does in those cyclones, then the country will be submerged. Permanently (or until the next ice age). The sea level might be falling there (I have never heard this my self, so could you explain how it is occurring), but if sea level continue to rise, this will not continue to be the state of affairs. And the figure of 2mm a year of sea level rise, is that an average or do you have a source that says that it has been a constant rate of rise. If it is an average, then this might conceal an increase in the sea level rise in recent times (eg: just say that 200 years ago it was rising by 1mm, 100 years ago it was rising by 2mm and now it is rising by 3mm) and also over what period was this estimate taken. Actually it was a hypothetical question. IF we could avoid the effect should we. I agree that all we can do now is to mitigate the effects. But, if we have a chance to halt the effect entirely, should we do it? It is meant to highlight the moral problem of the attitude of "It's too expensive for me to do something now, let us leave it to our children to do something when it occurs". I also agree about the problem with knee jerk reactions. Take Malaria and DDT as an example. Scientists discovered an excellent insecticide, but before the long term health effects were known, the governments were using it on mass to kill mosquitoes and other insect pests and when it was discovered that DDT had side effects on people and other animals, they had to ban it. In this case, the problem is simple (continued emissions of greenhouse gasses) but the solutions are many. There are many viable solutions, it is just people arguing over which one we should use. It is a bit like people arguing over which direction they should jump to avoid an on coming train. While they argue the train gets closer and closer. There comes a point when jumping either way would have been better than getting hit by the train. In choosing a solution to GW, which way we jump will be meaningless once we hit a point of no return (and according to some models we have already past that point). As there is a big variation in the different models and their predictions of the point of no return, we can not be really sure when we have hit it. IT is a bit like arguing over which way to jump to avoid an oncoming train and not knowing how far away that train is. It would be better to jump sooner rather than later. In terms of GW. It would be better to do things that will be low impact (people wise) now and keep investigating the best solution, than argue over which would ultimately be the best solution in the long term and do nothing until then. I have heard people say that some of the wind farms are aesthetically pleasing. Well each to their own. As for the fact that solar does not produce more than 1%, well that is all about funding. There are many subsidies and tax breaks that apply to power generation (it depends on the country you are in as to what and how much these are). If we removed these, then the prices of Solar and other alternative systems would be more competitive in pricing. Also, billion upon billions have already been sunk into establishing these polluting power sources. IF the same funding was applied to the alternative power, then they too could be producing the same as the "big 4". Take Nuclear. For a while Solar was actually competitive with it. But Nuclear got more funding and they are now one of the big 4. What if, instead of the pressures of the Cold War facilitating the funding of Nuclear, it had been Solar, or Wave power that got that funding. The world would be very different. A lot of money is sunk into these big 4, and it is precisely because so much money and resource have been sunk into them that they are the "Big 4" in the first place. Solar has had far less funding than any of the Big 4, but it is well on it's way to becoming competitive (price wise). And if it becomes cheaper, then you will start to see it producing more than the 1% it currently is. So if we put more funding into researching alternative/renewable energy source to make them more cost effective than the big 4, this will start us on the path to lower pollution levels. Solar seems the best option out of the lot. The plants have not been described as eye sores, they don't make loud noises (like wind and wave power), they don't produce pollution, they can be located in places far removed from people, etc. The only thing is that the technology is not mature. And the only reason the technology is not mature is that it doesn't receive a lot of funding for research or production. We could, now, convert all our power to Solar, but it would take time and be expensive. However, in the long run, the prices would drop as the technology gets more funding and subsidies. As more research is being done (there are some solar technologies that could produce power far cheaper than any others, but there is not enough funding to bring these to maturity).

Such an easy statement to make, but it is only your opinion. But, lets look at the reasoning behind your claim and why it is not true. If you have done clinical studies, post a link to the journal that they have been peer reviewed in. IF someone has invested the money to do a clinical study of your "cure", then they would want it to be peer reviewed, otherwise all that money that they spent on that study would have been for nothing. You can easily do the experiments your self: 1) Get a cat 2) Make sure it can't lick it's self 3) Keep testing it's saliva for antibacterial properties. If the saliva looses it's antibacterial properties, then it is not the saliva that is the source. If it retains it's antibacterial properties, then the source of the antibacterial property is not with the cat licking it's self but would be in the saliva. This kind of experiment is so easy to do that it can be replicated by nearly anyone. You could likely replicate this as a school experiment. Why then would a big pharma company, falsify such an easily reproducible experiment? If any high school laboratory could expose them, they are definitely taking an massive risk in falsifying this kind of experiment. If any lab assistant could prove that this company was lying about such thing, lawsuits would fly. So, from this, I can be quite sure that they are not lying. I haven't done the experiment my self, but I know how easy it would be to repeat it, so I am confident that people, not associated with big pharma's would have done so and reported it if they had different results. Science works on peer review and with such a simple experiment, it would have been tested. If just 1 pharmaceutical company wanted to bring down the others, they could release information contrary to this and demonstrate that these companies were lying to the public. The companies would loose all credibility, their stock prices would plummet and they would go out of business. The only one standing would be the company that blew the whistle on the lying companies. They would then have a monopoly and not have any competition. Remember, all these "big pharma" are in competition with each other, so they are not collaborating. Anyway, from what I remember it was a University study seeking to find new antibacterials that can be used, so they would not have had any incentive to lie about it, and it wasn't even funded by the pharmaceutical companies so how could they lie about it (and why when they would want use this information themselves). So, you claim that it is all "Fabrications" seems not to be set out on stable foundations. You seem to want the big pharmas to be lying to the people to act as "proof" that your solution is correct. Whether or not the big Pharma are lying has no impact on the validity of your claim. Do not use them as "proof" or evidence that your claims are true. If your claims are true, provide the proof. If you are concerned about making money off of it then pay for the patent, and then share the data. That is what patents are there for.

That is what I thought too, but as the effect would appear to be a tunnelling of an electron form one plate to the other, I wasn't sure. I have no formal scientific education on this (only what I have read my self). The thing is, the particles might be virtual, but as the Casmir plates show, these virtual particles can exert real effects. If the virtual particles can interact with the normal particles, then the "Energy" comes from the annihilation of the Electron in one of the plates (which gives enough energy to "promote" the virtual electron into a real electron). If the virtual particles don't interact with the real particles, then, of course, this can't occur. Can a virtual positron annihilate a real electron?

Absolutely wrong. There is Solar, Wind, Hydro, Geothermal, Wave, etc that have claimed far less lives that Nuclear, so Nuclear is not the "Safest", it has not kill few people "than any other source of energy used by mankind". So if you see a truck out of control and heading for you, you won't attempt to jump out of the way, even if you had no chance to avoid it... If we could avoid the effects of global warming, should we? If we could spend money and resources, now, and avoid the suffering of millions of people, should we? Think about the morality of what you are saying here. You are advocating the "head in the Sand" approach to the potential suffering of millions of people, if not billions. If the sea levels rise too much, then whole countries will disappear into the ocean (look up a country called Tuvalu). Where will these people go. Will your country take them in, will your taxes pay for their relocation? Will you let them compete for your jobs? Will you give a bit of your land to them so that they can have a place to live? There are more places in the world than Greenland and Alaska. How about just: If we caused this problem the it is our responsibility to fix it. Putting a man on the moon was just 2 countries (and they weren't even working together)... What if we had every country in the world working together? What if we had the 6+ billion people all striving for the same goal? Would we have a chance then? The atmospheric and oceanic systems (these are at the heart of what is called global warming) are Complex (wikipedia) systems. What this means is that small changes can produce big effects. So "a few tenths of a degree" could produce big effects. Yes, I do. So I'd like to do something so that we can avoid it if possible. Have you got proof that it is unstoppable? Is the attempt to do so worthless? Is the technologies that we develop in the attempt not worth something in their own rights? Are the lives and well being of other people worth so little to you? Do you not think about your future that you would refuse to spend a bit of money now to save a lot of money in the future? There is a saying: Those that fail to plan, plan to fail.

This is only true if we only assume that any glitch must be real. If we change our assumptions to that of assuming that it could be a glitch in a simulation, then we can use that to investigate. But, suppose this person thought: "What if there is something outside of my box?". What if he then spent time thinking about the box, what it is made from, are there any hole that he could look out through, etc? Could he no have a chance to find out if there was anything outside the box, could he in fact "Think outside the box"? ( (pun intended) No, first came the idea that the Earth might not be flat, then they looked for proof with their telescopes. The idea might have come to them because they observed "anomalies". However. they first had to think of them as "anomalies". People were looking at these "anomalies" for a long time and still no one made that connect. The moon is round. The Earth casts a round shadow on it. But they didn't think of these as anomalies. It took a person to say "What if these are anomalies, not reality?", and that is what I am suggesting is the starting point of this kind of investigation. You are saying "if we assume...", I am saying "don't assume...". And they would have been right. Gravity is not faster than light, observations of Pulsars and Super Nova indicate that it travels at the speed of light. But this is assuming that we know everything. We don't in 2000 years time, the people will look back at as and say "They used to believe XXXX, how could they when we can obviously see if we just look around us that is not the case". If we are going to progress at all, we have to start by questioning our assumptions, even if it ultimately leads to a dead end of questioning. Yes, in a cascade chain there could be other simulations that come after us. But, they would come after us. We would be being run "NOW", they would not yet exist. Just as if we were able to create a simulated universe, those simulated universe would not exist "yet". So, even with cascading simulations, we are at the bottom of the rungs. At the moment. But as our universe doesn't seem to run like that, we can eliminate as a potential. So we are back to my point about the fact that the resolution of our universe is individual building blocks all being simulated at the same time. So, if we do create a simulated universe, it will be by rearranging these building blocks into a form that can run a simulations of the universe. So it won't take more memory or processor time on our host. So to sum up the points covered: 1: If we are in a simulation. It has to be the bottom rung on a chain because we are either being executed now and all other sims don't yet exist, or we haven't created any sims yet ourselves. 2: There can not be an infinite number of Sims in the chain as processor speeds and memory can not be infinite on the top level host computer. 3: A simulated universe (under certain architectures) can rearrange components to create it's own simulations. As these architectures are more flexible, these sims will produce more sims of their own. Therefore we are more likely to be in one of these. 4: Our universe operates on a building block "architecture" so we are definitely in a building block architecture sim, if any. 5: If we drop the assumption that any phenomena that we see can not be caused by a glitch in the simulation system, then this gives us a handle to investigate the potential of such phenomena to be glitches in a host system. 6: There are more computers and more processing time/memory dedicated to running entertainment simulations (games) than are devoted to "universe" simulations. 7: Entertainment software requires that "Fast Approximations" need to be made. 8: Fast approximations will create "Glitches" and using point 5, we will be able to use these to answer the question about whether or not we are in a simulation. 9: There will be more simulations that use fast approximations than not as any chain that uses these will produce more simulations as they will have more processor time and memory to devote to them. 10: For a regular universe (like ours seems to be), it requires a host that is also regular. So in conclusion: we will be more likely to be in an Entertainment Simulation that uses Fast Approximations, and thus generates Glitches. Using this, point 5 becomes more relevant and we can answer the question of whether or not we live in a simulated universe by assuming that the universe has glitches in it. IF the host is regular (computable), then it will follow a logic. The glitches we identify will be able to give us information about the host computer system. The operation of the host computer system can give us some information about the physics of the host universe. Given time, we might even be able to exploit these glitches and communicate with the host and then find out if they themselves are a computer simulation.

Due to the Uncertainty principle it states that there are vacuum fluctuations and that these fluctuations can cause particles to appear and then they will annihilate and disappear. IF you could control what they annihilated with, could you then use that to extract energy from the Zero point field? Like this? This device would be very small (the distance between the curved plates would be close to atomic distances). If an electron and positron were created from the vacuum fluctuations they would have some initial velocity. If the movement was towards the back of the device, then the electron would curve in one direction and the positron in the other. The positron would collide with one plate and annihilates an electron there (this returns the energy balance to 0). The electron would then be free to collide with the other plate. So one plate has lost an electron and the other has gained an electron. One plate has a slight positive charge the other a slight negative charge. There exists a potential electrical difference between the plates and so we could use that for power. If the particles were going the other way (towards the front) the curve of the electron and positron in the magnetic field would not allow them to collide with the plates and this would reduce the zero point field in that direction (a bit like the reduction between the Casmir plates due to the exclusion of wavelengths) There is no moving parts, so the system can then repeat this procedure without having to "reset" it. It sets up a "One Way Street" for the fluctuations that produce the charged particles. My question is: Could this work as described and, if it does, is the energy really coming form the vacuum or from somewhere else (like maybe the magnetic field will be reduced by the energy needed to produce the particles). As I am not a scientist, I would like these questions answered as I can not answer them my self.